Jewish Ethnicity

Question

Please accept this as a sincere question from someone who believes he has some Jewish ethnicity but isn’t/hasn’t practiced the Judaism. I am interested in learning more about the distinction (for lack of a better term) between Jewish ethnicity and Judaism. I apologize in advance if I word some of this in an inappropriate or insensitive way.

I am an American male in my mid-70s. The basis of my question arises from some of the shared family history on my mother’s side. Her maiden name was Wygold (spelled “Wiegold” a few generations back). My maternal grandfather was named Daniel Wygold, and his father spelled his last name Wiegold. The family history I learned as a child was that my mother’s family fled Poland sometime between WW1 and WW2 to escape religious persecution.

My religious upbringing, looking back to it now as an adult, seems to have been some rather random blend of customs from Jewish, Catholic and Protestant faiths. For instance, as a child we celebrated Christmas but also always ate kosher when visiting my grandfather, uncles and great uncles.

Whatever answers or insights you may be able to offer will be appreciated, with me fully recognizing that it probably will have no real impact in my daily actions at this stage in life. I have always just been a little confused about Judaism as a religion as opposed to Jewish as an ethnicity.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

John

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Answers

  1. The Just Ask! - AskTheRabbi.org Team

    I appreciate your confusion! Judaism is hard to define. On the one hand, a Jew is defined as one born to a Jewish mother, but there are many races within that definition, all having common ancestry. Also the fact that one can become Jewish through conversion, no matter what race they are from, shows that it is not racial. Probably, it would be more correct to define us as a nation.

    Please allow me to point out that according to Jewish Law one’s Jewish status is defined by the maternal line. If you have incontrovertible proof that your mother was Jewish, you are Jewish. This is true even if your father was not Jewish.

    Best wishes from the AskTheRabbi.org Team